Product Description
About the Sonata Hymnica Series
Program
Note
Composer James Siddons draws on the ethos of
American rural hymns and spirituals to create evocations of the deeper, larger
meaning of familiar church melodies. These sonatas for piano solo explore these
deeper meanings in a variety of contemporary musical influences, while keeping
in mind the acoustics of small rural churches of the late nineteenth century,
with wooden floors and walls, high ceilings, and dimensions determined by local
builders who knew how to shape a room for excellent acoustics in an age of no
electricity and no microphones. These sonatas are but partly about the specific
melodies and words, and mostly about their meaning in spiritual contemplation .
. . and the piano, resonating, reverberant, sometimes whispering---as a sacred
harp.
Although
these sonatas have no specific titles, the first sonata may be thought of as
the Prayer Sonata, the second as the Travel Sonata, as in a spiritual journey,
and the third sonata is about our greatest fear, that of being alone and
without God.
Performance
Note
The pianist must keep in mind that these sonatas
are about playing the piano as much as playing a composition. Musical effects
characteristic of the piano and descriptive of the memory in American culture
are the substances of these piano solos. Touch is important: in many places,
several dynamics are called for on the same beat. All three pedals on an
American piano (damper, sostenuto, and sustain) are needed. The orchestral and
cinematic structure of this music requires extensive use of three staffs, which
may consist of two treble and one bass staff, or one treble and two bass
staffs. In basic grand-staff passages, the two staffs may both be treble or
both bass. The musical influences in these sonatas include religious song in
rural America, the chromaticism and Expressionism of Arnold Schoenberg and his
followers, and the tone colors of the music of Japanese composer Toru
Takemitsu.
Durations
Sonata Hymnica No. 1 --- 15 minutes.Sonata Hymnica No. 2 --- 11 minutes. Sonata Hymnica No. 3 --- 9 minutes.
About the
Composer
Composer, musicologist, and pianist James Siddons
studied composition with Dika Newlin, a protégé of Arnold Schoenberg, and
electronic music with Merrill Ellis, founder of the electronic music program at
the University of North Texas, where he also earned a PhD in musicology. After
a year at the University of London, where he studied musical analysis at Kings
College and electronic music at Goldsmiths College, Siddons spent two years in
Japan as a research scholar at Tokyo University of Arts, participating in the
Ethnomusicology Seminar of Fumio Koizumi. Siddons has also studied theology and
liturgy at the Duke University Divinity School. In addition to books and
articles on contemporary music and music in Japan, Siddons was written
compositions in many genres. Recordings of his piano performances are available
at online streaming services.
His website is www.JamesSiddons.com
His performing rights organization is ASCAP.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.